


Time and Distance

by King_Scrungo



Series: Ineffable Companion [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Good Omens (TV), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe (literally), Crossover, Fantasy, Gen, Outer Space, Science Fiction, TARDIS - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/King_Scrungo/pseuds/King_Scrungo
Summary: Tired of Aziraphale's shenanigans, Crowley reaches out to an alternate dimension in hopes of getting some distance. In this dimension, he meets a very strange man with a police box that also happens to be a time machine.





	Time and Distance

**Author's Note:**

> When one considers writing a crossover fic between Good Omens and Doctor Who, there is an immediate and unavoidable conflict between the universes in that in Good Omens, the Earth is canonically 6,000 years old. In Doctor Who, however, the Earth is billions of years old and the first freaking episode involves time-traveling to Earth more than 40,000 years ago... I tried to come up with a solution involving some Torchwood lore.

That God-forsaken angel had really done it now. In all the millennia that he had lived through; in all the time he had spent defying Hell and avoiding Heaven, deftly weaving fake reports and performing miracles for the sake of the angel; in all the things he had put up with in his incredible, terribly long existence simply for the hope of being able to see that awful excuse for an angel again, Crowley had never been so utterly sick of Aziraphale's bullshit.

The thought that so much of the plastic polluting Earth's oceans consisted of straws was a lovely idea to Crowley. Due to the severe adverse environmental effects of the funky plastic drinking tubes, the demon tried to throw them away as much as possible. Often, he'd illegitimately acquire an abundance of straws all at once, just to chuck them right into the ocean. Up until this point, straws had been a favorite item of Crowley's. But now there could be no more straws, never again - because this was the last god damn straw.

Suffice to say, Crowley needed a little bit of space. But leaving the planet wouldn't be enough. Flying out of the solar system, escaping the galaxy, or even standing at the edge of the reality itself wouldn't be enough. No, Crowley needed to go further. A different plane of existence. Somewhere severed from the grace of God, where not even Lucifer himself could touch him.

So naturally, he went to Wales. Or rather, the alternate dimension that Wales supposedly contained, according to a couple of demons Crowley knew.

The Welsh capital of Cardiff just so happened to be situated on an anomalous time-space rift that punched a hole through the very fabric of reality itself. Or so Crowley had been told. Through no celestial being ever took the time to study it, the rift was generally understood as a one way portal to God-knows-where. The odd angel or demon would disappear through this rift every couple of centuries, never to be seen or heard from again. Very few demons even went near it, but that was the exact kind of distance that Crowley sought. He was done with this universe. Hopefully, he could find a new one here.

As he approached the center of the city, the feeling of shifting reality grow stronger. It was an uncomfortable feeling of almost overwhelming wrongness. It chilled Crowley to the core and he wondered if humans could sense it too. Probably not, considering he was the only one that seemed to be put off but the huge temporal anomaly in the middle of the city. Something was very, very wrong with the universe here. Crowley could see why most demons preferred to stay away from it.

For some reason, Crowley had been under the assumption that a dimensional gateway would be a little more obvious. He hadn't entirely thought this through and he felt a little lost when the rift didn't immediately make itself clear to him. Though he couldn't see anything entirely out of the ordinary, every step he took brought on an ever-increasing feeling of universal skew. So at least he seemed to be headed in the right direction.

Crowley was sulking, walking along a road framing the Bristol Channel, when he suddenly felt a tangible pull towards the water. Something huge and powerful and universal gripped his soul with icy fingers and tugged Crowley forward. A riptide current in the universe pulled at him, irresistibly urging him towards the distant channel. Crowley had no choice but to head to the water, entranced, as something beyond esoteric called him forward, presumably in the direction of the rift.

Walking with the current, he felt the sense of the rift grow stronger. The gaping hole in reality that Crowley had only heard about second-hand became something almost palpable. It was definitely here and Crowley was definitely walking right into it. There was no telling where he would end up if he went through, but it seemed the only way he could get enough distance from Heaven, Hell, and Aziraphale. All of time and space wasn't far enough. He needed to be somewhere else entirely. As he neared the rift, Crowley felt sure that he was about to end up on another plane. But he was okay with that. It was calling him; he could feel it.

Crowley didn't skip a beat when the pull of the rift led into the ocean. In fact, he sped up a little as the tug on his soul grew stronger, marching onwards over the seafloor. Schools of confused grey fish swam rapidly away from the demon as he marched forward over fields of rocks and fishing nets. With every passing moment, the intoxicating feeling of the rift grew stronger and stronger. A magnetic sense of attraction pulled Crowley forward. He was a celestial being, made from the fabric of the universe, while the rift appeared to be precisely the opposite.

At this point, Crowley was practically running across the bottom of the sea, deep enough now that the heavy evening light of the world above grew faint through the water. A sort of feral excitement enveloped the demon and he knew he was close. He didn't know much else, really, other than the fact that he was moments away from the rift. It took over his mind, quickly becoming all he could think about as the water turned black in the absent reaches of sunlight. Or perhaps something else was blocking out the sun.

Bit by bit, Crowley's entire being was consumed by the rift. He forgot Aziraphale, Heaven, Hell, Earth, falling, and everything else he hated. He forgot wanting to find the rift and remembered /needing/ to find the rift. Then he forgot that too, and everything was gone except for Crowley and the rift.

And then Crowley was gone too.

｡･:*:･☆★☆･:*:･｡

The first fuzzy strands of wakefulness clawed weakly at Crowley's mind, hinting vaguely at the return of reality. He was falling endlessly through darkness, numb and blind. But this was fine. Everything was fine.

Awareness of the world around Crowley came in sleepy waves, gradually tugging him out of the darkness and into a cold, bright universe. The demon was suspended in air, frozen and facing something incredibly bright. Even through closed eyelids, the light was almost blinding compared to the darkness of the rift.

Slowly, Crowley cautiously allowed his eyes to flutter open. It was dark, with the exception of the incredible source of light in front of him. He squinted at the brightness until his eyes adjusted.

Before him was the planet Earth in all it's blinding glory, offset but the inky void of outer space surrounding it. Crowley was floating in space, observing Earth from the outside. The sun shone from somewhere behind him, shining light onto Earth and Crowley. All around him was void, with stars glinting at him with solemn certainty from their homes light-years away. It was cold, as space tends to be, but not uncomfortably so. At least not for a demon.

Crowley had never thought of the existence of God to be something tangible. He hadn't ever pictured it as a presence or understandable feeling; it was more of a given that one had to accept blindly. But now he realized he was wrong. He, Crowley, contained the balance of God and Satan within him as a demon. It was a feeling he had felt his whole life, but he was only now realizing that it was there.

The reason he noticed this now was because he couldn't feel it anymore. There existed a strange lack of divinity inside him and on the Earth below. It made him feel empty, but calm. He knew then that whatever planet he was looking at, it was not the one he came from. The rift had taken him somewhere where Heaven and Hell - at least the Heaven and Hell that Crowley knew - did not exist.

His head felt fuzzy, as if he had just woken up from a very long sleep. For a while, he stayed that way: not thinking clearly, strangely tired, and suspended in space tens of thousands of miles above Earth. For the aforementioned while, things were slow and calm. Crowley finally had some space to himself.

And then that while was over when Crowley heard the sound of something incredibly loud and unimaginably fast right behind him. It sounded like a strained wheezing, or the sound of wind that was terrified, or the sound of a car that wasn't starting properly. Or a combination of all three. Whatever it was, the most alarming part about it was that it sounded like anything, something which should've been impossible as Crowley was currently located in outer space.

He barely had time to turn his head to look as something big and blue barreled straight into him. Crowley was tossed aside quite forcibly, once again in a way that didn't quite make sense in zero gravity. Winded but generally okay considering his body wasn't entirely physical, Crowley tried to get a better look at what had hit him. An unintelligible blue streak raced away from him for a moment before making a smooth u-turn, backpedaling towards Crowley and slowing to a halt.

An old police box, much like the kind Crowley remembered from mid 20th century England, floated in space a small distance in front of him. Many initial questions arose for Crowley, mainly "how," "what," and "why." Then there was the question of "who" when the door to the box swung open and a man in a suit poked his head out. For a long moment, Crowley and the man just stared at each other, both looking equally baffled. 

"You hit me!" Crowley spoke first, finding that he could breathe and speak again despite being in a vacuum. He made a note of how the rules of space didn't seem to apply in the vicinity of this box.

The man in the box honestly seemed more confused than Crowley at this point. Blinking rapidly, the man shook his head as if trying to wake himself up. He finally responded with the question, "What are you doing here?"

Crowley had no idea how to respond to that. All in all, he wasn't entirely sure how he had arrived here. Or where here was. It certainly wasn't Cardiff, to say the least. "Just chillin'," he shrugged.

"In space?"

"Got a problem with that?"

The man glanced from left to right, then back at Crowley. He looked utterly astounded, but not too lost or confused, like seeing demons in space wasn't /entirely/ out of the ordinary for him. Actually, he seemed almost excited as he asked, "How'd you get in space?"

"Well I was in the ocean," Crowley began, pausing as he attempted to puzzle out what exactly had happened to him. With a deep breath, he continued "and then I was in space."

"Why were you in the ocean?"

"Why are you in a police box?"

"It's a spaceship, actually," corrected the man in the police box.

Crowley would have severely doubted that the tiny box was a spaceship were they not currently having this conversation in space. It didn't seem like it would be big enough to house all the components required for space travel. Of course clearly, it did. Crowley nodded, "well that is rather peculiar."

"Yes, it is," agreed the man in the box.

"It bigger on the inside or something?" Crowley waved at the box.

"Yes, it is," the man sounded a little caught off-guard by the question, like he hadn't been expecting it. That seemed strange to Crowley; 'bigger on the inside' was the only logical explanation for a ship that small on the outside. 

"...Can I see?" Crowley was genuinely curious. He hadn't seen anything that was truly bigger on the inside - unless he counted Hell. Which he didn't. Though the reaches of Hell did stretch further than the exterior of the building might suggest, it was still more of a state, not a thing or place.

"Maybe," said the man, grinning as he continued, "hello, I'm The Doctor! And you are?"

"Crowley," said Crowley. 'The Doctor' struck him as an unusual name, but he wasn't about to judge. After all, his own name was a bit odd as well. "Can I come in now? It's cold out here."

"Sure, I, uh--" the man called The Doctor cut himself off and stepped away from the door and headed into the box that was bigger on the inside.

Using his ethereal wings, Crowley peddled through space towards the box. They weren't really wings, not in a literal sense. It was more of the idea of wings. They weren't visible or touchable even imaginable, but they did the trick. As he approached the box-ship, it made a strange beeping/whirring sound, tipping very slightly away from Crowley. Then, as the demon was about to enter the ship, it lurched backward very suddenly. It whirred again and spun slightly as if protesting Crowley's approach.

"Hey!" Said The Doctor from somewhere within the box, "behave."

"Are you telling your box to behave?" Crowley managed to maneuver himself to land in the box-ship, despite it attempting to scoot away once more.

The box certainly was bigger on the inside. In fact, Crowley might even go so far as to say it was /massive/ on the inside. It opened into what appeared to be some sort of control room, with an elevated circular panel in the center that was positively riddled with switches and buttons. Lights lined every wall from floor to ceiling, while something huge and glowing lit up the floor beneath Crowley's feet.

In the middle of the room, on the other side of what Crowley assumed was the control panel, The Doctor whipped his head up to look at Crowley. "How did you do that?"

"Do... what?"

"You moved through space. That's impossible." The Doctor said matter-of-factly.

"It clearly isn't, seeing as I've just done it."

The Doctor stared at Crowley and nodded slowly. "Fair point... Anywho," he continued energetically, "welcome to the TARDIS, T-A-R-D-I-S, stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"Yeah- why is it a police box?"

"It can also travel in time."

"Of course, but -- why is it a police box?"

"It's camouflage." The Doctor replied, flipping a couple of levers on the central console.

Crowley wasn't sure how 'camouflaged' a police box would be on modern Earth, but he said nothing after that. The Doctor seemed busy at the controls, flipping levers and turning knobs until a screen flickered. Before Crowley could get a good look at it, The Doctor turned it away to face him. All Crowley saw was a little bit of text in a language that was definitely not English. He approached the control panel, standing opposite to the very strange man. The Doctor kept tapping buttons below the screen. For a moment Crowley was worried that he had forgotten about him.

"So where are you from?" The Doctor asked suddenly, "what planet?"

"Earth," Crowley replied simply.

The Doctor seemed puzzled by this, but he didn't ask any further questions for the time being. He just stared at the screen in front of him and leaned forward over the control panel.

"So I'm assuming you're..." Crowley hesitated, "...not from Earth?"

"No," The Doctor scoffed, a little distracted by whatever he was doing with the screen.

"What planet?"

"Oh, you wouldn't know it."

Crowley thought back to the countless star systems and planets he had had a hand in creating back in the beginning and assured The Doctor, "I'm almost certain I would."

"You really wouldn't." Insisted The Doctor. He seemed like he was trying to gloss over the subject, but Crowley wasn't about to let that slide.

"No, seriously. Try me. I bet I know it." Crowley pressed.

There was no response from The Doctor and it was clear he was deliberately ignoring the question. There was silence until the screen he was messing with beeped loudly at him, prompting him to smack it several times. "Gah! Stupid thing. What d'you mean--?"

The Doctor snapped his attention to Crowley as he trailed off. Immediately following a moment of intense staring, he circled the control panel to stand right in front of Crowley. From his top suit pocket, The Doctor retrieved a device that was vaguely reminiscent of a pen. Pointing it at Crowley, he pressed a button on the side. A blue light lit up on the end of the device as it made a rather annoying buzzing sound. Crowley took a bewildered step back as the Doctor waved the device up and down.

"Hey!" snapped Crowley indignantly, "what the hell are you doing?"

"Scanning," The Doctor mumbled distractedly. He turned the device off and stepped back towards the controls, plugging the thing into a socket on one of the panels.

"Excuse me, did I say you could--?" Crowley was cut off by an incredibly loud zapping sound and a shower of sparks from the socket for the strange scanning device. A huge tube in the very center of the console whirred up and down with a loud and angry wheezing noise. Moments later, the socket ejected the device, tossing it across the room with more sparks and zaps. There were several screens located in various places around the controls - they all flickered and went black along with about a quarter of the round lights on the walls.

Once the sparking had stopped, The Doctor ran over to where the device had landed on the far end of the control room. It looked like it had been fried, the end that had been in the socket completely blackened. "Oh no..." he lamented dejectedly, cradling the broken thing as if it were something very precious, "...my sonic..."

"You what, mate?" Crowley gave The Doctor a look of deeply annoyed confusion. The demon was trying to stay cool while at the same time processing an insane amount of weird information. Of course he was used to weird, being a demon and all, so it wasn't entirely world-shattering to be in a space-defying police box time machine with a very suspicious alien. It still wasn't the most ordinary situation he'd been in, though.

Still clutching the remnants of the scanning device, The Doctor stared Crowley down. For reasons that were beyond Crowley's understanding, his voice had an edge of sadness and anger as he exclaimed, "You broke my sonic screwdriver!"

"You hit me with a spaceship!" Crowley rebuked. "And I didn't do anything!"

"You broke my sonic screwdriver!" The Doctor repeated. For a very brief moment, he looked extremely upset. Then he tossed the screwdriver over his shoulder and shrugged, his tone returning to normal. "Oh well, I can always make a new one."

It should be noted that the device The Doctor called a 'sonic screwdriver' did not look even remotely like a screwdriver. It was more like a tiny flashlight that screams instead of lighting up dark rooms.

"So," continued The Doctor, "would you mind explaining to me why my TARDIS - which I might mention happens to be the single most advanced vessel in the universe - literally cannot comprehend what you are?"

"Is that what you were doing?" Crowley laughed. Being a non-physical celestial entity, he doubted that any amount of scanning would be able to figure out what he was. He didn't even exist - at least not in the way that every other being in the universe did.

"I have never, ever seen it do that." The Doctor admitted incredulously. In a rather nimble fashion, he leaped forward to stand directly in front of Crowley. He looked the demon up and down with wide and wild eyes. It reminded Crowley of the way that an excited child might look at an animal in a zoo.

"Oi, can you not?" Crowley took a few hurried steps away.

"You look familiar... have we met?"

"I'm pretty sure I would remember."

"You look like- like- like me," The Doctor stepped close once more, "but ginger. And cool." He gestured vaguely at Crowley's face and Crowley assumed that by 'cool' he was talking about the demon's sunglasses. Which were in fact very cool.

"I suppose I do," Crowley nodded. He had to admit that they did look astonishingly similar. Yet another unbelievably strange thing about this interaction.

"But you're sure you're from Earth?"

"Pretty sure, yeah."

The Doctor didn't look like he believed that for a second. Except Crowley was, technically, from Earth. Though he wasn't exactly human, he'd lived his whole life on or around the planet.

"What are you doing in space if you're human?" The Doctor questioned carefully.

"Bold of you to assume I'm--" Crowley paused, "hold on, why are you going to Earth if you're not?"

"Oh no," The Doctor froze before exclaiming, "the algae!"

"The what?"

By the time Crowley had finished speaking, The Doctor had gone back over to the console and started pressing buttons wildly.

"I have to return the sacred algae to Earth in the exact moment it was stolen from, or we could have a war on our hands!" The Doctor shouted urgently. He grabbed the biggest lever on the console and paused, turning back to look at Crowley. "You said your name was Crowley?"

"Yeah," Crowley gave an uncertain nod.

"Nice to meet you, Crowley. Hold on tight!" With that, The Doctor threw the lever and the whole ship shook. Several of the lights on the walls flashed, many of the broken ones starting back up again. The tube in the center of the console started moving up and down again, making the same wheezing noise as when the ship first hit Crowley.

The demon was thrown off balance by the sudden lurching of the room. He barely managed to stagger over to a metal staircase and take hold of the raised railing to stop himself from falling flat on his face. From across the room, The Doctor flashed a grin and a thumbs-up, which Crowley tentatively returned.

With a cacophonous series of wheezing and shaking, the TARDIS zoomed towards the Earth and they were off.


End file.
